Socialism: The Finale – What’s Left?

Origin Story

Podmasters

Society & Culture, History, News, News Commentary

4.7 • 811 Ratings

🗓️ 20 December 2025

⏱️ 98 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Welcome to the finale of Origin Story season eight: the story of socialism. Thanks to everybody who has followed our most ambitious season yet, especially those whose support has enabled us to make it. We left the narrative in 1991, with the collapse of the USSR and the so- called “end of history”. This week we’re not telling a new story but looking back on the whole season to reflect on the evolution of socialism over the last two centuries and where it might go from here. We begin by catching up with socialism since 1991, as China embraced “market socialism”, Latin America’s ‘Pink Wave’ rose and fell, and the Western left all but gave up on its dream of building a new economic model. Was the left forced to fight for small victories because the possibility of bringing down capitalism had slipped away? We then return to the beginning of the season and ask if all the most important strands of socialism, from violent revolution to utopian communes, existed in some form by the time Marx and Engels published The Communist Manifesto in 1848. Can socialism be strictly defined or is it a broad tradition encompassing multiple different visions? And how does it relate to communism, left-wing populism or social democracy? We explore some of the obstacles that repeatedly prevent socialists from achieving their goals, including factions, personality cults, cranks, authoritarians and the romance of defeat — most of which were recently illustrated by the fiasco of Your Party. Finally, we take stock of socialism’s achievements, including many of the rights we now take for granted. Has socialism been more successful as a means of critiquing and moderating capitalism than replacing it? So, what is socialism? Can one word really describe Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un, Zarah Sultana and Zohran Mamdani? How has a creed dedicated to solidarity and collective liberation produced so much rancour and oppression? Why are “temporary” dictatorships never temporary? Is social democracy really socialism? Will we ever see another socialist revolution or will that energy be sucked up by the populist right? And is socialism’s tremendous optimism about human nature both its greatest strength and its greatest flaw? Thanks again for listening to the story of socialism. It’s been a journey. We’ll see you in 2026 for some bonus episodes while we start work on season nine. • Get 25% off our highest tier annual Patreon subscription at ⁠https://www.patreon.com/originstorypod/membership⁠ • New Origin Story merch! https://podmarket.co.uk/collections/origin-story • Head to⁠ nakedwines.co.uk/origin to get a £30 voucher and 6 top-rated wines from our sponsor Naked Wines for £39.99, delivery included. • Use code ORIGINSTORY at the link below to get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan: https://incogni.com/originstory • Support Origin Story on Patreon • See Origin Story live at the Bloomsbury Theatre on 15th April 2026: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bloomsbury-theatre/events/2026/apr/origin-story-live • Buy the Origin Stories books on Centrism, Fascism and Conspiracy Theory • Subscribe to Origin Story on YouTube Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. Producer: Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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0:49.2	Subject to availability. Hello, welcome to origin story. In each episode, we take an idea, figure, or event from history, explain its origins, and talk about how it influences political discourse today, and sometimes we extend the idea over a whole damn season. I'm Doreenlinsky, author of Everything Was Go. And I'm Ian Dunter, and I have broadly lost the world to live. So this is the end. The story of socialism concludes. It has been our first theme season, our first season with three-part stories, inevitably, therefore, our longest. Congratulations, in, we made it. Congratulations to you two. Can I just say to anyone, I mean, there's been quite a few now writing and you're like, can you do conservatism next time? It's like, I'll just tell you right, A, fuck you. B, no, it'll be some time before we undertake anything like this again. This has been a very, very tiring process. It's about twice as much work as any other season, I think. Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's right.
1:48.1	So only very, very, please, all your suggestions should be for extremely easy topics. Like very, very small. If you've been listening to some or all of the story of socialism series, thank you very much. We've learned a lot. We hope you have two. Ian, I mean, who did
2:02.2	you enjoy spending time with? What did you like?
2:05.4	I liked very few people in this story.
2:09.4	Okay. And all the ones I did like, I think, were in the Labour episodes. It was, obviously,
2:15.4	it was much easier with the new left that you were covering, but you, you know, you did the research there, I was just sat in the room. So really, you know, because you had more time for Marx, didn't you, because of your endless capacity of human sympathy, which is something that I really lack. I mean, I just didn't have any time for him at all as a person. Things obviously didn't get any easier from there when we got to the Bolsheviks. So it was a great relief to reach Labour, who were not even people that I particularly love, but at least it's like your genuine, you know, people. When I'm searching, I just want people to be entertaining generally. Even sometimes, like, you know, in the Bolsheviks episodes, it was like I was grateful sometimes
2:52.5	for Trotsky, you know.
2:54.4	Yeah, yeah.
2:55.4	I totally get it.
	...

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